


The Other Side

by laniew1



Category: Superman (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-06
Updated: 2012-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-20 07:41:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/582938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laniew1/pseuds/laniew1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Multiple Earths have returned and one barrier is beginning to stretch thin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The sections in full italics are of the Alternate Earth.
> 
> Because it's been asked that I post this here.

**The Other Side: Part 1**

 

 

He knew he was alone. Mercy had checked the penthouse before she’d removed herself for the evening and if there was one thing Mercy was, it was thorough at her job. If there’d been anybody inside she would have shot them and then had the body removed while Lex waited on dinner.

So, yeah, he knew that he was alone… and the fact that he was hearing voices only served to make him wonder if he was close to another break.

The voices ceased, and really it was only the one voice and not so much even a voice but a series of mumbles in a familiar cadence, so maybe he didn’t have anything to worry about.

Except that Kon was dead, and even though they’d never sat down and really _talked_ Lex still knew what the boys’ voice had sounded like.

_“It’s just a bunch of calculus proofs, I can do them anytime…”_

Lex stopped, turned. That had been an actual sentence, words that he understood instead of the mumbling voice that had been plaguing him since Mercy had left.

_“No, I’m with Clark next week. Lex is going to be in Tokyo or something.”_

He followed the voice, insistent as it was that he pay attention to it since it wouldn’t go away.

There was a room at the end of the hall, it had been empty for years. Although when he pushed open the door there was… he blinked because it _couldn’t_ be _real_.

Kon was _dead_. He hadn’t been invited or allowed at the memorial, but that didn’t mean that he was any less aware that the boy that for all intents and purposes was his _son_ was dead.

Except there he was, hazy although if he turned his head to fast the entire room, boy and all his belongings were prone to flickering in and out of view like a mirage and he wondered if this was some new way that Superman and his band of do-gooders was going to try and drive him insane.

 

******************************************************************************

 

_Kon laughed, phone pressed to one ear and he should be working on his Calculus homework but instead he was listening to Tim tell him a seriously long winded story that somehow made Batman sound like a bumbling idiot._

_Which Kon knew was nowhere near the truth and Batman would skin Tim alive for even allowing him to think that._

_“Kon?” a knock at his door and Lex’s head appeared. “Homework done?”_

_Kon grinned, his gentle, easy, ‘believe everything that I say’ grin that he’d learned in equal parts from Lex and Clark alike. “Almost.”_

_Lex raised an eyebrow, “Busted,” Tim laughed in his ear._

_“Don’t we have an agreement?”_

_Kon sighed, “I’ll call you back later,” Tim murmured his ‘I love you’ and Kon grunted his agreement because there was no way that he was saying that in front of the man that by some creepy form of genetics was actually half his **father**._

_Ammunition was ammunition, and Lex might be acting the role of his father but that didn’t mean that Kon had to put actual **weapons** into his hands._

_“Finish your homework before ten and you can call him back,” Lex smirked, like he knew that the likelihood of that happening was impossible._

_Which it was, unless Lex helped him with his homework. And weren’t dads supposed to do that? Help their kids out with homework? He could remember seeing some movie that had shown dads doing that._

_Moms too, but he didn’t have one of those._

_Just two dads, who tried to kill each other on odd days and acted like they were best friends on even._

_“He’ll be out on patrol before I get done,” Kon muttered._

_“Then you should probably get to work.”_

_“You could always help me with it,” Kon said hopefully._

_“I could, but then Clark would tell me that I’m not allowing you to develop your own problem solving skills or some such nonsense and we wouldn’t talk for a week.”_

 

******************************************************************************

 

It had been a long day.

Too long, dealing with Lex and what Clark hoped was just another bid at his getting a shot at an insanity plea, though he wasn’t being tried for anything at the moment which kind of made that entire thought seem kind of silly.

Then there’d been a shuttle launch that had gone awry when he’d been leaving for lunch. Getting the shuttle and its crew safely back to the ground had taken his entire lunch break plus a half hour and listening to Perry scream at him about his lack of dedication had never been made his top ten list of favorite things to do.

Lois was out of town so he had no one to commiserate with, he could probably call Bruce and have a good laugh about Lex seeing Kon in his penthouse, but he knew Bruce (and Batman) well enough that Bruce wouldn’t find it amusing.

And Clark had better things to do then spend the evening staking out Lex wondering what evil scheme he’d put into motion that Clark didn’t know about.

He rubbed his forehead and twisted his key in the lock and was trying to decide whether to have pizza or Chinese and then he stopped dead.

Because maybe Lex wasn’t going mad.

Maybe they all were, or at least him and Lex together.

Because there was Kon, looking younger then he’d been when he’d died. Sitting on his couch like he had every right to be there. Bag of chips in one hand, bottle of water in another and the TV remote balanced on one knee.

Clark felt his heart and stomach twist in pain at so many things left unsaid and undone.

 

******************************************************************************

 

_“Kon,” he stopped dead in the doorway and tried to remember if this was his week to have Kon._

_Back when Kon had first appeared, a young Superboy in a version of his own costume, looking so like him at twelve that it had been painful to look at him sometimes, Lex had made up a schedule of when each of them would have him._

_A custody agreement of sorts for a child that was both of theirs and yet neither of theirs._

_“Lex is in Tokyo this week,” Kon’s eyes didn’t move from the TV._

_Clark wondered if Kon got along better with Lex then he did with him. Sometimes Clark thought that Kon didn’t seem to like him very much._

_“It’s just until tomorrow, I’m at Titans Tower this weekend,” Kon said, eyes finally flicking over to him. Clark moved fully into the room and noticed that there was a commercial on the TV, and maybe Kon didn’t mean to ignore him, maybe he was just entranced by whatever TV show he was watching._

_“Okay, does this mean I won’t have you next week?” Clark asked. And regretted it immediately because of the way that Kon made himself busy shuffling the bag of chips to the side and setting the water down._

_“No,” he shook his head, not meeting Clark’s eyes. “Not unless… I mean Lex will be back by then if…”_

_“Kon… I didn’t mean…” He always seemed to say the wrong thing when it came to Kon. Every word that came out of his mouth seemed to drive some invisible wedge between them and he didn’t like it._

_This was his son, his and Lex’s and he didn’t like thinking that maybe Lex was better then him at being a father to this boy._

_Even if Kon was getting ready to turn seventeen and was getting to the point where Lex and him trying to act like his parents was getting to be invasive._

_Clark knew that Lex had people watching Kon even when he was with the Titans. Like the way that Lex had people watching him even when they were supposed to be enemies._

_Lex took care of the things that he thought of as his, even if he didn’t like them very much._

_For Kon, that meant an over-protective father figure. For Clark that meant an enemy that spent half his time trying to protect him and the other half trying to kill him._

_He was sure there would come a time when that didn’t sound insane to him, but not any time soon._

 

******************************************************************************

 

He was just thankful that Robin wasn’t with him.

He turned a blind eye but he knew what was going on beneath the Titans Tower, knew what Robin was hoping to accomplish and while part of him applauded the boys’ sense of dedication another part of him wondered if Robin had maybe been too attached to Superboy.

He should probably have nipped that friendship in the bud the moment that it had become apparent that there was something there besides the sense of camaraderie.

But they were teammates, friends. Even the few, subtle hints that he’d dropped, the ones that said without saying so that his friendship with Kon-El could make him a liability had been dismissed as irrelevant.

 

******************************************************************************

 

_“Something I can help you with?” his voice was calm and even to the point of uncaring. He was glad that he’d sent Robin to Blüdhaven to work with Nightwing for the night._

_The clone flinched, the hurt expression reminiscent of early barbs that he’d tossed at Superman that had hit their intended target._

_Batman took no prisoners; this… thing shouldn’t even exist. Let alone be involved with Robin._

_“I know what you want,” the voice was soft, young. Sounded like Clark instead of Superman._

_“Do you.”_

_“You want me to leave Rob, but I’m not going to,” sullen now. A little bit of anger and the anger was all Lex Luthor because neither Clark nor Superman had ever sounded like that._

_“Why do you hate me?”_

_“I don’t hate you; to hate you would imply that I care one way or another about you. The only thing that I care about is that your very presence is distracting to Robin and I can’t allow that.”_

_“What about Wonder Girl?”_

_“What about her?” he skirted around the clone, the computers were still booted up, a tap of keys showed them all still locked._

_“Why aren’t you all trying to get her to leave Rob? It’s not just me in this thing you know…” the clones voice trailed off, like he’d just realized that maybe Batman didn’t know about their little escapades._

_But he knew everything._

_“I know all about your little triumvirate, more then either Superman or Wonder Woman know.”_

_“But you’re only trying to get rid of me, not her. Is it because she’s human? Because I’m half human you know.”_

_“It has nothing to do with her being human or you not being fully human, it has nothing to do with the fact that half of you is made from Lex Luthor or that you were cloned in a lab. It has to do with what is right,” he stalked up to the clone, looming a little bit and was struck suddenly by how young it looked. Not that he let it show._

_“You are children, playing with things that you have no knowledge of.”_

_“I love them,” came the soft whisper, a hint of despair._

_He leaned closer, eyes locked on the clones. “And **that** will never be enough.”_

 

******************************************************************************

 

He got to the Watchtower at the same time as Wonder Woman, she looked calm and cool and he figured that was a sure sign that she hadn’t been plagued by visions of Kon in places doing things that he’d never done.

Talking about Clark and Lex like they were age old friends instead of long time enemies.

They were silent as they walked down the hall to the meeting room, both of their steps slowing as they saw Martian Manhunter and Hawkgirl standing outside the room. Batman was coming from the opposite direction and Superman peered over J’onn’s shoulder and almost choked.

“Okay you all are _seeing_ this right?” and that wasn’t a whine in his voice, because it wasn’t a hallucination or him going crazy if _everyone_ was seeing it.

Right?

 

******************************************************************************

 

_“Do we have any semblance of a plan?” Dick asked. He shifted in the seat and wondered how Bruce had managed to sit for hours in this chair when it was so freaking uncomfortable._

_“We’re hoping that the Justice League isn’t totally destroyed, we’re hoping that some of the smaller teams are still at least partially intact,” Donna was tapping her fingers against the table, sitting ramrod straight in Wonder Woman’s seat like she could feel the ghost of her mentor standing behind her coaching her on how to look and act like a proper superhero._

_At least she wasn’t crying anymore._

_“That’s a lot of hoping,” Connor was standing behind the seat that the Green Arrow would normally be in, he wouldn’t sit down until the last possible moment. Like the rest of them he felt the ghosts of their older counterparts keenly, and his was doubly bad because Roy should be sitting in that chair… and would have been if his transport hadn’t been destroyed mid-flight._

_“We’ll have big blue at least,” Dick said optimistically. At least with Superman they could have some form of strength._

_“No you won’t,” three sets of eyes shot up at the soft voice._

_Kon stood in the doorway, blue jeans, ragged t-shirt. Cuts and bruises on his skin that would heal within days but just served to show at the moment how badly he must be hurt._

_Behind him Bart was a still presence. Dick had wondered where Bart had disappeared to, he wouldn’t have thought it would be to find Superboy._

_A glance over at Donna showed bright eyes and with Kon standing there awkwardly like he’d rather be anywhere else but standing in front of them there was bound to be tears, and yelling at any moment._

_“We should get cleaned up, get everyone into costume,” a pointed look at Kon who only had to pull on a t-shirt yeah, but a break would allow everyone the chance to adjust to their new circumstances…_

_Kon nodded and patted Bart on the arm as he left._

_“I won’t work with him,” Donna snarled._

_“Donna…”_

_“Cassie and Tim are **dead**. And if he hadn’t left them when they’d needed him the most…”_

_“We need all the help we can get,” Connor murmured rubbing a tired hand over his face. “The Green Lantern Corp will be here when they can but… it’s just us.”_

_Dick closed his eyes and felt bitterness and sorrow on his tongue. “All hail the Justice League, long live the Justice League.”_

 

******************************************************************************

 

“That is why I called you here,” J’onn said, arm waving at the room as they scene vanished and they saw an empty table, empty chairs.

“What the _hell_ is going on?” Clark asked angrily.

Beside him he could feel Bruce’s body tight with tension; Diana was staring at where Donna had been sitting only seconds before.

Cassie and Tim dead? _All_ of them dead if whatever evil they were being faced with had dealt a big enough blow where Dick and Donna and Connor, Kon and Bart were all that was left besides the Lanterns.

“It is a repercussion of the destruction that Superboy Prime and Alexander Luthor caused. The walls between the worlds wear thin, the wall separating our world from that one is perilously close to fading entirely away and that world with it.”

“What are they facing? Can we send them help?” Ollie had snuck up behind them at some point, whether he’d seen Connor sitting at the table in his place Clark didn’t know.

“These are memories, faded actions. Whatever battle they were facing has already been either won or lost. Now we just wait for the outcome so we can know what actions we need to take for their Superboy.”

“You think this has something to do with Kon?”

“The memories all have a common link…”

“The clone,” Bruce murmured.

“The young Superboy has appeared in all of them so far. Cyborg called from Titans Tower to say that they had witnessed a fight between Superboy, Wonder Girl and Robin that led to Superboy quitting the team.”

Ollie slapped him on the back. “Have a spare bedroom Superman? You may need one.”

 

******************************************************************************

 

Bruce wouldn’t tell him what memory he’d seen though he’d confirmed that there had been one. Diana had just stated quietly that in her memory she’d appeared to be warning Kon away from Cassie and Tim both.

Clark wondered at what he’d missed, what he hadn’t done here that he’d done in some other universe that had caused him and Lex to be able to co-exist semi-peacefully so that they could raise Kon if not together then with each others help.

He slowed when he saw Bruce standing outside his door, still in uniform.

“I was doing much in the same way as Diana,” he said quietly, no emotion at all in his voice.

“Warning him off?”

What _had_ he missed? What could have been so vastly different that he and Lex could raise Kon together, but that Bruce and Diana didn’t want their charges to be friends with his son?

“They were in a relationship, the three of them. Together.” Bruce stopped when Clark gaped at him.

“We shouldn’t talk about this out here,” Bruce yanked on his arm and pulled him into his own room. Then they both stopped dead.

“You know at some point I’m going to get used to walking into a room and having a ghost staring at me,” Clark sighed.

Because there was Kon again, in the act of taking his t-shirt off and Clark gasped at the sight of the bruises and cuts on the boys’ chest and back.

Some of the cuts were still slowly seeping blood and from Kon’s posture he could tell that he was bone-tired.

Bruce shivered next to him when Dick walked _through_ him into the room.

 

******************************************************************************

 

_“You should have somebody take a look at those.”_

_“They’re fine, they’ll heal in a couple of days,” Kon muttered, turning so his back faced him, yanking a t-shirt on over his head._

_“We don’t have a couple of days to wait for you to heal back up to full strength,” Dick stated. “We have a matter of hours before Doomsday makes his way to us; we need everybody at 110 percent.”_

_Kon nodded, back still turned to him. Dick rolled his eyes and turned to leave._

_“I didn’t leave them,” he heard softly as he was halfway to the door. He stopped and turned, Kon’s back was still to him. “They left me before… we had an agreement you know, back when everything started… the three of us together or nothing and,” deep breath and Dick was almost positive that if Kon had been facing him that the younger man would have had tears in his eyes. His voice was shaky enough for it._

_“They left me, they didn’t need me. They didn’t want me anymore and…”_

_A cough and Dick wondered if this was all some ploy for sympathy or if Kon was telling him the truth, god knew that Tim had been closed-mouthed about what had happened. He knew from Donna that Cassie had been as well._

_There’d been three people in that relationship and two of them were dead and couldn’t speak for themselves._

_“We need you at top shape…”_

_“I know,” a whisper._

_“What we really need is Superman, is there **any** chance that…?”_

_“He’s dead, him and Lex both. I searched and searched until... there wasn't anything to hear anymore then I searched for five more days because Clark at least… I knew that if I could find him and get him to the sun that…” Kon shook his head. “They’re both dead.”_

_Dick felt that iron-vise around his heart, the one that kept tightening every time another fatality came in._

_“We’re all going to die,” he said softly, a sudden realization. Because there was no way that they could win, not against Doomsday, not against the one monster that had managed to kill Superman and yeah he’d come back from the dead but…_

_Kon turned, eyes red-rimmed but still dry._

_“Probably. But at least we’ll go out fighting.”_

 

******************************************************************************

 

Clark closed his eyes.

Doomsday.

There was no way that Kon even with the help of the others could fight and beat Doomsday.

He was trying not to think about that fact that he was apparently dead, that he’d apparently died with Lex.

 

******************************************************************************

 

They were waiting on pins and needles waiting for the next memory.

There was no telling who it would appear for, or where. Everyone waited and there’d been a brief moment when Clark had thought that Bruce and Diana might have been able to convince Tim and Cassie and rest of the Titans to wait at Titan’s Tower.

He’d hoped for that outcome, because each memory showed a darker and darker future. One where they were all dead and the only people still standing were getting ready to go into a battle they couldn’t win.

He stood at the window and stared into space. Somewhere, just a little ways past a thin barrier that separated their world from others, a battle had taken place that had been even more brutal then one they’d faced with Superboy Prime and Alexander Luthor.

There’d certainly been more casualties.

“Is anybody else kind of freaked out by this?” he heard Dick murmur and he turned.

 

******************************************************************************

 

_“Any sign?” Dick asked, he’d been forced into the infirmary, arm bound in a sling and he’d palmed the tablets that the Lantern Corps doctors had tried to foist on him._

_Until everyone was safe he couldn’t afford to be knocked out._

_“The Lanterns are still checking in, still nothing,” Donna had a bandage across one cheek; one eye was swollen almost shut._

_They were still alive._

_“Connor?”_

_“Is still unconscious, Bart needed a snack and he said he’d start searching again.”_

_“Do we even know if he’s still on Earth?” Dick asked, Donna shook her head._

_“We’re looking everywhere.”_

_“He’s wearing one of those stupid monitors that Luthor designed to keep track of him, how can we not have found him yet. Is it even still emitting a signal?” Dick made to move Donna out of the way and she snarled at him, snapping teeth and he held up his one functioning hand and backed off._

_“If it wasn’t still emitting a signal we would have stopped looking. It’s still there, faint but there. It’s just…” Donna smacked the side of the monitor in front of her. “It’s like something is bouncing the signal, every feed I get says that he’s in the Artic,” she looked at him meaningfully._

_The only thing in the Artic was the Fortress of Solitude, and there was no reason for Kon to be there._

_“The Fortress of Solitude is a big pile of ice, its rubble. Kon spent almost a week there trying to get to Superman and Lex after Doomsdays first attack.”_

_“I **know** that,” she growled, then slumped in her chair. Fatigue evident in every line of her body. “It doesn’t make any **sense**. But every reading I’m getting says that’s where his signal is emitting from. I’ve got every Lantern at our disposal tearing it apart piece by piece and nothing.”_

_“There can’t just be nothing, Kon can’t have just disappeared. If his signal is coming from there then that’s where he is.”_

 

******************************************************************************

 

Clark stared as the memories faded into nothing and left a silent room in its wake.

The Fortress, Kon was at the _Fortress_.

_His_ Fortress in this world not the other, that’s what it all had to mean. It’s what every memory had been driving at them.

Kon was _here_ in their world, had been for who knew how long because J’onn had said that these memories were of past events and it had been weeks since he’d been to the Fortress. Kon could have been there the entire time.

“Superman wait,” Batman made to grab for him as he turned.

It took him mere seconds to get there, and he knew that there would be a contingent behind him, though it would take them some time to get organized and determine who was going.

In his mind he put even money on Batman appearing alone while they argued.

“Kon?” he yelled, a hollow, echoing sound and he raced through the rooms. Desperation flooding him, making him move faster.

He had a chance to fix things, to do things maybe they way he should have, _could have_ done them.

But not if he was too late.

It was the last room he checked, his own room in the Fortress, and he could vaguely hear his Pa’s voice in his mind telling him that things were always in the last place you looked.

“Kon,” he whispered. He pulled the boy into his arms with gentle hands, it had been too long.

Whatever injuries he’d suffered were mostly healed, the cuts were but faint lines, bruises mostly faded… but his skin was pale and for a brief terrified second he couldn’t hear a heartbeat, couldn’t _feel_ him breathing.

_Too late, too late, too late._

He cradled him against his chest and took a deep breath, a calming one and concentrated.

And there was the heartbeat, faint and weak. A shallow puff of air against his cheek and he closed his eyes and bent his head and didn’t know what to do.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, he knew he should move. Should get Kon to the Tower so that the others could help, but instead he sat there. With this boy that was his son in his arms, listening to him breathe.

He would need to tell Lex, he knew this. Knew that Lex had been seeing the memories the same way that they had been. He had to remind himself that his Lex wasn’t his friend, hadn’t been helping him raise Kon.

_He_ hadn’t even been raising Kon. Just letting Ma and Pa do it, because in his mind there had been no place safer then Smallville for Kon and somehow he’d convinced himself that it was the right thing to do.

Ma and Pa had raised him and he’d turned out okay, and what he knew about raising a teenager could fit on the pin of a needle. There was no doubt in his mind that if he’d been trying to do it, by himself, that he would have screwed up and Kon would have had a fit of teenage rebellion and gone evil.

A hand touched Kon’s arm and he realized that his eyes were still closed when he opened them and found Batman kneeling in front of them.

“We need to get him help,” Bruce said softly, and it was Bruce staring at him. Not Batman, Batman wouldn’t be talking softly, wouldn’t still be touching Kon’s arm.

Clark nodded and started shifting. Kon still cradled against him and when he moved the boy moaned low in his throat. Though his eyes never opened.

 

******************************************************************************


	2. Chapter 2

**The Other Side: Part 2**

They had him in a room directly facing the sun. Even being half-Kryptonian Kon’s body had needed the jump start the sun provided.

No additional memories leaked through and Clark wondered if it was done, if Kon’s world had simply ceased to exist like J’onn had predicted.

Robin and Wonder Girl were waiting outside the Infirmary doors when he decided to get something to eat.

Both in costume and they had to scan handprints to get in and handprints to get out and since Robin hadn’t managed to hack the computer system yet they were limited to their two hours a day.

Bart breezed past him, not in costume and was in the room before Robin and Wonder Girl had even taken two steps inside.

The door closed behind them.

Kon hadn’t woken yet.

Clark still hadn’t figured out how to tell Lex that Kon was alive.

******************************************************************************

Lex was waiting inside his apartment when he made a rare trip home, sitting on his couch with Mercy standing behind him. Looking as out of place as Clark always had when he’d been in Lex’s space.

They stared at each other and this was the first time in more years then Clark could count where no one had pulled a gun and he wasn’t on his knees from Kryptonite that he couldn’t see.

“I’ve given you every opportunity to tell me what the hell is going on…”

“Kon’s alive,” he blurted out, he couldn’t remember the last time that he’d managed to shock Lex enough that the actual expression showed on his face but there it was.

“You know it’s probably a damn good thing that most of your enemies just try to kill you, because if they tried to capture you, you’d spill all your secrets before they even started in on the good torture.”

“I managed to keep mine from you for years,” Clark glared at him. Lex ignored him.

“Also that’s not quite what I thought you were going to say,” Lex narrowed his eyes. “The hallucinations?”

“Were memories, past events from another Earth. Kon, their Kon ended up here somehow.”

“He doesn’t know how?”

“He hasn’t regained consciousness since I found him.”

“I want to see him.”

Clark stared at him.

“Are you kidding?”

“Do I _look_ like I’m kidding?” Clark winced at the expression on Lex’s face. “He’s going to expect to see certain things when he wakes up and I’m assuming from the things that _I_ saw that he’s going to expect to see _us_ , together.”

“Lex we haven’t been able to be in a room together without a fight breaking out since I was sixteen.”

“I like to think that we’ve both matured since then.”

“You tried to shoot me, in the head, just six months ago,” Clark reminded him.

“You caught me on a bad day.”

******************************************************************************

To say the Justice League was a little upset about Superman leading Lex Luthor through one of their safe havens would be putting it mildly.

He had to promise to stay with him the entire time, which he’d been planning on doing anyway because there was no way in _hell_ he was leaving him alone with Kon. At least not while Kon was still unconscious and unable to defend himself if Lex decided that the temporary truce was over.

He still had to put up with Batman hovering and Wonder Woman popping in and out trailing her lasso through her fingers and eyeing Lex with suspicion.

The only ones that seemed unfazed by Lex’s position by Kon’s bedside were Robin and Wonder Girl and Clark wondered what he’d missed that those two seemed to take Lex’s presence in stride.

Clark gave him a week before he was bored and ready to go back to war with Superman.

No one put a time limit on how long Lex could spend in the room with Kon, not like they’d been doing with Robin and Wonder Girl and Clark wondered if it was because no one wanted to tell Lex what he could and couldn’t do or if they thought that knowing he was in one place made it easier to keep an eye on what he was doing.

“He moved his hand this morning,” Lex said conversationally three days after he’d started his bedside vigil.

Clark had long since given up the pretense of Superman and was sitting in jeans and a flannel shirt, cross-legged on a second bed that had been moved in at Lex’s direction 12 hours after Clark had brought him to see Kon.

“J’onn and Batman both agree that it’s only a matter of time before he wakes up. His vital signs have been getting stronger by the day.”

Lex nodded, returning his attention to the coffee mug in his hand.

Clark stretched, rolled his neck. He was bored out of his mind, he knew Lex was as well which was the only reason that he stayed. He wasn’t going to be the first to crack.

So he played word games in his mind, he and Lex flung snide remarks at each other at times, reminisced about the past at odd moments.

At night, when it was dark and he should have been asleep or at least faking sleep like Lex, Clark wondered how they were going to handle a Kon that thought they were friends if not something else when he and Lex could barely handle the fragile truce that had sprung up on his behalf.

******************************************************************************

Kon woke nine days after Clark found him at the Fortress.

Lex was giving him a familiar lecture on Alexander the Great that Clark had heard three times when he’d been a teenager and they’d still been something like friends.

“Am I dead?” Kon’s voice was weak and Lex stopped mid-sentence, head whipping around and Clark darted across the room.

There were alarms in the room and they would have already signaled Kon’s waking to those that needed to know. There were two sets of doctors that would be descending on the room in seconds, ones that dealt with Justice League injuries and the ones that Lex had brought in because he didn’t trust the JLA’s doctors.

“No,” Clark wrapped his hand around Kon’s fingers. “Don’t try to move.”

“I’m…” Kon blinked once, eyes drifting shut.

“Kon,” Lex was on the other side of the bed, he’d sat down on the edge and was squeezing Kon’s other hand. Kon’s eyes opened again, not fully, just a sliver.

“Lex?” he blinked again, Clark thought he might be in some pain because his face twisted into a grimace before relaxing slightly.

“No really, am I dead? Because,” Kon tried to lift the hand that Lex was clutching and just let it drop back onto the bed. “You’re both dead… I searched, and searched and searched…” his voice drifted off, growing softer and softer as his eyes closed again.

“Kon?” Clark murmured.

“You’re not dead Kon,” Lex said softly. “You’re not dead and neither are we. It’s a long, long story but you need to be awake to hear it.”

“I’m really tired,” Kon whispered, though he opened his eyes. They were filled with pain and grief and Clark wondered what was taking the doctors so long.

“You’ve slept long enough,” Lex said sternly, Clark glared at him but Lex ignored him in favor of keeping his eyes locked on Kon.

“You’ve slept long enough,” Lex repeated. “You keep your eyes open for a half hour and I promise to not try and kill Clark for a week.”

Kon laughed weakly. “You can’t use that one anymore. I’m not a kid you know, I managed to figure out years ago that you haven’t been actively trying to kill Clark since, you know, I showed _up_ ; besides you think I don’t know what you two are up to when you guys are having conferences in your office about my grades? I mean, superhearing guys.”

“I thought we weren’t going to discuss that. Ever.”

Kon grinned, face relaxing slightly. He drifted back off again as the doctors came rushing in.

Lex looked over and met his confused eyes. “You never asked what else I saw.”

******************************************************************************

He should probably be worried that there was evidently a routine in how he and Lex were dealing with Kon.

Lex led the conversations they had with the boy (when he was awake and they’d been assured by two different sets of doctors that Kon’s sleeping of 22 hours a day was perfectly normal) and Clark followed.

Because while Clark had seen the hell that had been the end of Kon’s world, Lex had obviously seen whatever day to day life Kon had been living with Lex and himself prior to it all falling apart.

So Clark had followed Lex’s lead and Batman had warned him that not telling the boy that he wasn’t where he thought he was (not home, never again home, because there’d been just the vaguest of confirmations that Kon’s world had simply ceased to exist) and he’d agreed but…

But Kon was still healing and the two hours a day that he was awake was not enough time to really get into the explanations that would be needed to explain the how and whys of Kon’s place in their world.

Besides the fact that Clark didn’t really understand how Kon was there in the first place.

He was sure that Lex had some ideas but Clark just wasn’t ready to sit through the ensuing lecture without someone there to keep him awake, which meant that he was waiting until Kon could manage to stay awake for more then fifteen minutes at a time to ask for it.

Robin and Wonder Girl had been staples at Kon’s bedside, though he’d not managed to be awake for any of their visits, luckily.

Clark hadn’t mentioned them by name because there was the little voice in the back of his mind that reminded him that Kon thought that Tim and Cassie were dead and that while two miraculous resurrections were relatively easily explained, explaining more then that would cause the boy to question things that they didn’t have answers for.

Like the fact that Clark and Lex weren’t the Clark and Lex that had been sharing parenting duties and instead were a Lex and Clark that could most of the time barely be civil to one another and were only managing it now because of his presence.

So far explanations of any sort hadn’t been an issue, Kon slept and when he was awake Clark wasn’t sure, but he thought that either Batman or Wonder Woman were making sure that their protégé’s were kept busy enough that by the time they got to Kon’s room he was once more asleep again.

And maybe it was the false sense of security, so far there’d been no difficult questions and Kon hadn’t asked to see anybody in particular so it had just been the three of them and the importance of the fact that this wasn’t their Kon and they weren’t his Lex and Clark had started to fade.

And then been thrust _right_ back to the forefront on the occasion of Robin and Wonder Girl’s seventh visit.

Because on that seventh visit Kon was _awake_ , he’d been awake and laughing and then Tim and Cassie had walked into the room both smiling because Kon was _awake_ and Kon had taken one look at them and went so horribly white that Clark had actually feared there was something horribly wrong.

Then he _flew_ from the bed, hitting the wall on the farthest side of the room, where he stumbled and turned and pressed his hands against the wall, his eyes wide and wild and so totally not the boy that had been laughing at Lex just seconds earlier.

This boy was scared and his eyes were scanning the room looking for escape and Clark could already hear Batman’s “I told you so” complete with that damn smug smirk.

There was fear and pain and grief, emotions so palpable that Clark thought he might actually be able to _feel_ them as they darted across Kon’s face lightning fast.

“Kon?” Lex tried to go to him and stopped, stumbling slightly. “What the…?”

“Lex?”

“There’s… some sort of… shield?” Lex said with some confusion. And that hadn’t been one of Kon’s gifts, there’d been the telekinesis and he’d been manifesting some of Clark’s abilities before he’d been killed but…

“Kon?” Cassie’s voice was soft and she touched the invisible barrier that separated them from the boy backed into the wall.

“You’re not…” Kon stopped, shook his head and _looked_ , maybe for the first time, at Lex and Clark. “You’re not my parents,” he said woodenly, his face going eerily blank and distant in a split second.

“Kon, it’s okay,” Lex said quietly, he pressed both hands against the invisible barrier and _pushed_ , like if he pushed hard enough he would be able to push _through_ it. “You’re safe here.”

“That’s what all the bad guys say,” Kon laughed harshly, it sounded bitter and Clark winced.

“It would have worked you know, but they,” he waved a hand at where Tim and Cassie were standing side by side. Cassie’s face was a mixture of sadness and longing, Tim’s face was as blank as Kon’s and Clark wondered if that was where Kon had learned the expression.

“I was _there_ , when… they’re both _dead_ ,” tears leaked from his eyes and Kon shook his head, his expression crumpling suddenly.

“I didn’t get there in time for Tim, but Cassie,” he closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall, slumping down onto the floor. “Cassie died in my arms, right before I got the call that Doomsday had attacked the Fortress.”

His eyes opened, dull and bleak and Clark couldn’t even imagine at what he’d seen. “You took Lex there because you thought he’d be safe, you both _died_ there.”

He took a shaky breath, wiped his eyes. “Where am I?”

“You’re safe,” Lex repeated.

Clark walked up next to Lex, pressed his own hands against the barrier, stared at him until Kon looked up at him.

“Kon-El,” he said quietly, putting all the authority of Superman and Kal-El and his position as Kon’s _father_ into his voice.

The barrier dropped (and they would _definitely_ need to find out how he did that) and nobody moved. Kon still huddled on the floor, a glance at Tim and Cassie showed they both wanted to go to him but were uncertain of their reception.

Clark finally moved to his side, Lex seconds behind and Kon didn’t resist when Clark pulled him into his arms. Just let Clark hold him and he was crying silently against his shoulder when Clark felt one of Lex’s hands press against Clark’s back, the other on the top of Kon’s head.

“I don’t want them here, not yet. I can’t…” Kon whispered against his shoulder. Clark glanced behind him and he didn’t say a word but he knew that the whisper hadn’t been soft enough because there were tears on Cassie’s face and Tim had a hand on her arm pulling her from the room.

Lex was murmuring the same phrase over and over again, so softly that Clark had to strain to hear it.

“You’re safe here, it’s okay, you’re safe here.”

Clark hoped that he was right.

******************************************************************************

Bruce was waiting for him outside Kon’s room when Clark got tired of the unrelenting silence.

Kon hadn’t said a word since Clark and Lex had helped him back into his bed and Tim and Cassie had left. He’d just been silent, Clark couldn’t even remember a time where Kon had been that silent unless unconscious. And it wasn’t like the boy was even angry or sad or anything from what Clark could tell.

He was just… Clark didn’t even know a word that would explain how Kon felt after coming to the realization that this wasn’t his world and that there was an almost 100% chance that his world was gone and everyone that he knew and cared with it.

That there wasn’t any chance that he would open his eyes the next morning to the possibility that it had all been some horrible nightmare, that he’d stumble out of his room to find Clark and Lex laughing over coffee and Tim and Cassie still loving him.

That he hadn’t been alone, even at the end.

“How is he?” Bruce looked awkward; Clark wondered why he was in civilian clothes instead of his uniform.

“He’s…” Clark looked back at the door he’d just come through. If he looked _through_ the door he knew he would see Kon lying in his bed, flat on his back, staring at the ceiling. Lex sitting in a chair beside the bed staring at Kon. “He’ll be okay I think… eventually.”

Bruce nodded. “Tim said that he had some sort of… breakdown?”

“What he saw,” Clark leaned against the wall, sighed. “He was there when Cassie died, he says he wasn’t there when Tim died but I’m assuming he probably saw his body. He searched for days for me and Lex, our, my heartbeat the only thing driving him to continue searching for us. He went into a battle that he had absolutely no hope in winning and then woke up here, in a world that has exact replicas of the people that he loved and lost. The breakdown is probably a long time overdue in coming.”

“You don’t have to deal with this by yourself, neither of you do,” Bruce looked as if it pained him to include Lex in his sentiments.

Clark knew that there would be an offer of somewhere safe for them to take Kon, somewhere away from the public eye where the boy could heal in privacy.

Somewhere like Wayne Manor (which Lex would fight tooth and nail) where Bruce could keep a close eye on everything so he could feel like he was in control of a situation that had no controls.

It was an offer that he would have to turn down, because Kon needed time.

Maybe a _lot_ of time before he would be able to look at Tim without seeing the boy that he’d lost, before he could look at Cassie without seeing the girl that had died in his arms.

Before he could look at the two of them and not see the lovers that had left him.

“Maybe after, I think he needs time, to… you know… to realize that while this isn’t his world we do want him here.”

Bruce looked at him.

“He’s not Kon, Clark. This boy thinks of you as his father, he thinks of _Lex Luthor_ as his father.”

“No, he’s not,” Clark agreed. “But maybe if I’d done things the way I should have. If I’d handled things differently, if I’d made even the tiniest bit of an effort to get to know Kon before it was too late…”

“Don’t spend your time wondering what would have happened if you’d done things differently. Hindsight is bliss, but it doesn’t solve anything, and in this case? All it’s going to do is maybe make you make the wrong decisions.”

“Wrong decisions?”

“You’ve left Lex Luthor alone in Superboys’ room. Are you telling me that was a _wise_ decision?”

******************************************************************************


	3. Chapter 3

**The Other Side: Part 3**

Lex had a room ready for Kon. Clark wasn’t sure why he was surprised, he’d spent an entire week watching Kon interact with Lex in the same manner that Clark could remember interacting with _his_ father.

He kept thinking he should be happy that Kon’s relationship with Lex didn’t mimic Lex’s with Lionel, but in the back of his mind he thought that maybe it would be easier for him if Kon and Lex had been trying to stab each other in the back.

And it wasn’t like Kon didn’t interact in the same manner with him, because he did. This Kon was _used_ to treating Lex and Clark as his parental figures (even if he didn’t call them dad and dad) and it appeared to be something he just couldn’t shut off just because Lex and Clark weren’t _his_ Lex and Clark.

When it had become obvious that Kon was as healed as he was going to get Lex had announced that Kon would be coming home with him. And there was nothing he could say (besides subtle reminders that this wasn’t Kon’s world and maybe he wanted to not go with a Lex that he didn’t know the first thing about) when Kon acted like it was perfectly normal for Lex to want him to go home with him and for him to want to go home with Lex.

Clark went with them, because one lecture from Bruce about his lack of intelligence in regards to Lex Luthor and Kon was his limit for the year.

Mercy met them when they landed, all three in civilian clothes and though she turned her nose up at Clark she didn’t try to kill him so Clark was taking that for a success.

The other shoe would drop eventually and Lex would go back to trying to take over the world and Clark would go back to stopping him from doing so and Kon would unfortunately be caught in the middle.

A short drive to the penthouse and it had been a _long_ time since Clark had been there as anything besides Lex’s enemy; he recognized absolutely nothing when they entered. Kon already looked like he’d had enough with dealing with the two of them being silent at each other and Clark wanted to tell him to get used to it because it had been almost 15 years since he and Lex had been able to be even remotely civil to one another.

When Lex led him to a room that was obviously supposed to be his a slight smile appeared on his face, the first one that had crossed it in days and Clark hadn’t realized how much he’d become used to Kon smiling and being comfortable with them until he wasn’t anymore.

Right now Kon looked relaxed and if not happy then sort of relieved, sort of like he felt when he got to go back to the farm… like he was home or at least in a place that he recognized as home.

Clark wondered why Lex had managed to get all the family stuff and Clark had gotten death and destruction. It really wasn’t fair.

He closed the door, a flimsy barrier between him and a Lex and Clark that wanted to help him but weren’t the family he wanted.

“You don’t need to stay,” Lex said finally, one last glance at the closed door before he sighed and walked towards the living room.

“I don’t have anywhere else to be,” Clark followed him, and he didn’t. Because his name had been removed from the JLA roster and his only assignment as Superman was to figure out how to handle a Kon-El that hadn’t seen anything wrong with leaving the Watchtower with Lex Luthor.

Batman was thinking brainwashing, but seeing as how Clark had only left Kon and Lex alone for five minutes he thought it near impossible that it could be that.

“You mean you don’t trust me alone with Kon,” Lex poured himself a drink, taking a sip and looking at Clark over the rim of the glass. He pointedly didn’t offer anything to him and Clark had to bite his tongue to say something snide about manners and guests.

“Well really, do you blame me?” Clark glanced back at the closed door. As long as he’d known Lex the other man had normally had four plans, three of which they would know about and then the fourth would be pulled out of nowhere to smack him upside the head with Kryptonite at the most inopportune moment.

“You were never interested in him before; excuse me for thinking that you might have ulterior motives.”

“You seemed to be screwing him up enough for the both of us,” Lex retorted.

“Do we have to fight every single time we’re in the same room? Can’t we just agree that Kon needs both of us, _expects_ to have both of us without being at each others throats.”

“Well maybe if you’d stop picking them we _wouldn’t_ fight all the time, I never wanted to fight with you Clark. Superman yes, you no.”

“You can’t fight with just one of us. We’re the _same_ person,” Clark ground his teeth, it was like having _that_ conversation with Lois all over again, the one where she didn’t understand why she couldn’t just love Superman and think Clark was an idiot.

He was also frustrated and angry and worried that Kon was going to try and flee out the window when he heard them arguing.

“You’re human, you make mistakes. Superman is… not human.”

They always had the same fight, every single time. He could probably recite it and save Lex the energy from having to spout the same words out.

_Superman was an alien, Superman had no reason to want to help the human race and was obviously just lulling them into a false sense of security so that he could take over the planet with little to no resistance._

Batman had felt that way at one point, might still for all he knew. He _did_ know that Batman had a half a dozen ways to stop him if he tried; if Bruce and Lex could work together they might actually be able to destroy him if he ever went insane.

But they couldn’t, and they would never need to. Because Clark had spent a lot of time making sure that he couldn’t fulfill his father’s purpose for sending him to Earth.

“Were they even able to be in the same room without fighting all the time,” he wondered out loud. Lex glanced over at him.

“They were lovers, Clark.”

“I kind of figured that out all by myself, I’m not an idiot,” Lex looked like he wanted to argue with him about that fact. “That doesn’t automatically mean that they weren’t fighting every single _other_ moment they spent together.”

Lex looked away from him.

“They came to terms that allowed them to peacefully co-exist without forcing Kon to choose between them.”

“Well that’s really vague.”

“I don’t know Clark. I never saw whatever conversation they had that allowed them their truce. Sometimes I wish I had,” the last sentence was barely breathed. If he’d been anyone else he wouldn’t have heard it.

“What do we need to do? To make him comfortable here, to allow him to trust us.”

Lex looked back at him, eyes piercing and intent, like he could judge Clark’s intent purely by his gaze alone.

“Well first, we need to be able to be in the same room without fighting all the time.”

“So what? We forget the past happened and try to be friends again?” Off the top of his head he could think of three people that would think that _he_ had been the one brainwashed.

“We were able to be friends once; we could at least _try_ and be civil to one another. I tell you that I won’t try and take over the world and you tell me that you won’t watch me like you expect me to do that at any possible moment.”

“Should we put that in writing? Because no one is going to believe this.”

******************************************************************************

The bed was identical to his, the furniture, the pictures, the mess he’d left on the floor before the world had fallen apart. If he didn’t know better he would think that he was home.

But he wasn’t.

The Lex and Clark here were trying to be quiet, but Kon could hear them arguing two rooms over and he wondered how they’d been raising their Kon if they couldn’t even have one civil conversation. He didn’t want to wonder what had happened to his counterpart, because it was kind of obvious that he was gone.

Probably dead.

He laid back on the bed, new sheets and new pillows and he was _really_ sure that their Kon had _never_ stayed in this room, not once… because nothing was broke in.

And everything smelled new and unused, like it had when he’d first gone to live with Lex. When he’d been young and scared and really unsure as to whether this was even a smart move.

It had all turned out all right but that first night he hadn’t slept, instead he’d sat in the middle of his bed the entire night waiting for an attack that he was sure was going to come the minute that he’d let his guard down.

He’d found out later that Superman had flown around the penthouse the entire night waiting for the very same thing.

But no attack had come and it had taken a few days more before they’d all relaxed.

It had taken a year before he stopped wondering if he let his guard down _too_ much if Lex was going to dissect him in a lab. Another six months past that when he’d started to think of Lex as his father, even though he never called him that to his face.

He’d trusted Lex a lot sooner then Clark had, but then Clark had a lot more years of actual history and anger and hatred to work past.

He turned over on his side on the bed, staring at the picture on his nightstand. It was one of Young Justice, him and Bart and Tim and Cassie and Cissie looking unbearably young and innocent.

He wondered where this Lex had gotten it from. Because if it was pretty obvious that his counterpart had never stepped foot into this room, then there was no reason for Lex to have this picture in the first place, the him that had been here might possibly have never even _had_ the picture in the first place.

Things could have been vastly different here from what his world had been like.

His gaze locked on Tim and Cassie’s faces. Cassie had a wide, happy grin. Tim didn’t look as stoic as he normally did though you really had to look to see any sort of expression.

He’d loved them more then he’d loved anything else in his life. His heart still hurt to think about the betrayal, images flashing through his mind like snapshots. Images of them wrapped in each other looking up at him in dismay and shock…

They’d known that it had been wrong; they’d tried to apologize, tried using pretty words that he couldn’t even remember anymore… all he’d only been able to think of was how many times they had done it when he hadn’t been around to catch them and wondered when they’d been planning on telling him.

Or if they were just going to let him continue thinking that everything was okay, when really they hadn’t wanted anything to do with him anymore.

He’d thought he’d buried any feelings that he’d had for them, but his heart and soul had ached at seeing Tim’s body broken and mangled, ached at holding Cassie in his arms, looking up at him in the last seconds of her life telling him that they’d love him forever.

He’d screamed his heartache to the heavens, tears streaming down his face, seconds later he’d gotten the call from the Fortress. The A.I. panicked and screeching as Doomsday had obliterated it.

Had killed Lex immediately because when he’d gotten to the Fortress the only heartbeat that he’d heard was Superman’s, the only sound he’d heard was Clark’s whispering, softly to Lex even though the other man was dead and…

He wiped a hand across his face and wondered where the tears were coming from.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered and he didn’t know who he was apologizing to.

He was alive, but his world was gone.

Donna and Dick and Bart and Connor were all gone. The last people that he’d ever fought with and at the end he’d not even _wanted_ to fight.

He’d been all for just curling up in a ball on Superman’s bed and waiting for Doomsday to destroy the Tower because he’d already lost everything that he’d ever cared about, everything that would have made fighting worth it.

Because Cassie and Tim were gone, there would be no forgiveness given or received.

Clark and Lex were gone; there was no family for him to take comfort in.

Superman gone, Supergirl gone. He had been the last of his kind and he’d only been a half-blood Kryptonian as it was.

They were all here though, all those people that he would have been willing to fight for, willing to _die_ for were here, he knew that.

But this Cassie and Tim didn’t know him. This Clark and Lex didn’t know how to interact with him and he wondered again what their relationships with his counterpart had been like.

Had this Kon had a family?

Or had he been as utterly alone as Kon now felt.

******************************************************************************

The scene that he walked into was so eerily familiar that for a whole ten seconds Kon thought he might be able to fool himself into believing that everything had been a horrible nightmare.

Lex was sitting in his chair, coffee in front of him, toast sitting on a plate untouched, paper open.

Clark was sitting in his chair, two glasses; one with orange juice, one with milk and a full plate of eggs and potatoes and bacon that he was busily working his way through. At his elbow was his copy of the Daily Planet and they were having an argument that Kon had heard almost every other morning for all the years that he’d been alive.

“Good morning Kon,” Lex noticed him first and that was when he was reminded that this wasn’t his parents or his world. Because Lex looked away from Clark and focused on Kon and that had very rarely happened unless he was in trouble.

“Morning,” he mumbled, sliding into his chair and there was a glass of milk already there him and Becky (who’d always been their cook so he spared a smile for her, because familiar face) slid a plate filled similarly to the one Clark was finishing in front of him.

“Did you sleep okay?” Clark set his fork down, tapped his finger against the edge of his glass of milk and stared at him intently.

Kon stared at his plate, shifting uncomfortably, because it had been a long time since he’d sat a table with a Clark and Lex that were trying too hard to be a family.

“Fine,” he muttered, he nibbled on slice of bacon even though he wasn’t hungry.

“That shield thing that you used against us in the Watchtower,” Lex said suddenly. “How did you do that?”

Kon looked up at him, and wondered who the Kon here had been. The first thing he’d done, that _they’d_ done was figure out his powers.

“It’s the T.T…”

“Tactile Telekinesis,” Clark offered quietly.

“I’m quite aware of what Kon’s abilities are,” Lex glared at him.

Kon cleared his throat, “I can use it to kind of push things away if I want, kind of like a shield. Tim…” he stopped. Because Tim had been the one that helped him work through his powers one by one until they figured out what all his limitations were and then they’d pushed further because Tim had thought that with training he could use them for even more.

“Tim helped you develop on your powers?” Lex looked surprised. Like he’d thought that _he’d_ been the one that would have helped him and it was on the tip of his tongue to tell them that Lex had fought him being in any way involved in super-hero politics before he turned 18 and had lost (and not graciously either).

Because half of him may have been Lex, but the other half was Clark and he’d gotten all the parts of Clark that said that he had powers for a reason and that he just couldn’t sit around and wait to turn 18 to use them to help people.

He didn’t tell them that at the beginning Tim hadn’t been helping him because he’d wanted to, he’d been helping him at first because Batman had wanted to know what Kon’s limitations were so he could determine a way to stop him if he went bad.

Because he’d been half Lex Luthor and the cape community had all know that. For most of them Lex Luthor meant evil personified and anyone that shared his blood was bound to try and destroy the world at some point.

He glanced over at Clark and decided that either Clark had figured that out already (it had taken him/them much longer before) or his breakfast wasn’t sitting well with him.

He wanted to tell him not to worry about it. That he hadn’t blamed Batman or Robin, still didn’t.

And they’d been able to use the information that Tim had gotten from that exercise to shut Match down when he’d appeared, if they hadn’t Match would have done a lot more damage then what he’d ended up doing.

It wouldn’t make any difference what he said though, it hadn’t back then. Superman would still end up having words with Batman, they might have the same argument and might not talk for a few months like Clark and Bruce had originally.

But they would end up working it out and they’d go back to being the World’s Finest and him and this Tim might have the same laugh that he’d had with his about the fact that eventually the World’s Finest… well that might some day be them.

******************************************************************************

He was being watched.

He could feel eyes focused on his back and he could feel Mercy getting twitchy beside him. From past experience he knew that she was seconds away from pulling her gun and hustling him away.

He needed clothes though, the ones that Lex had filled his closet with were okay, but he couldn’t believe that their Kon would have been caught dead in them.

Dress pants and dress shirts in every color of the rainbow, blazers and dress shoes and there wasn’t a pair of jeans or t-shirt to be found.

“We’re being watched,” Mercy said quietly, her lips didn’t move and her expression didn’t change. When Kon had first met her he’d spent days trying to figure out how she did that.

“I know,” Kon paused looking through the rack, glanced back at the cart that was half full and rolled his shoulders.

He hated shopping, with a passion. But this experience was hands down better then the first time he’d had to do this.

Then Clark and Lex had accompanied him…

…because god forbid he go somewhere by himself, someone might walk off with him and he snorted in his head just like he’d snorted out loud back then.

Because, hello?

_Superpowers._

So back then Clark and Lex had come with him and then had proceeded to spend the majority of the time bickering over what exactly proper clothing for him had been, he’d tuned them out and just tossed stuff that made both of them cringe into the hands of the store employees that Lex had commandeered.

It had been the only fun he had that day.

“Tim and Dick,” he said quietly. He pulled a shirt out just so he could snort at it. Lex would wear it, but someone would try to beat him up the first time he tried to leave the penthouse in it.

“That’s not really your color,” Mercy stated, Kon looked over at her. Because for Mercy that had been surprisingly sarcastic, there’d been a really long time where Kon had thought that any emotions that Mercy or any other of the people that Lex surrounded himself with had were piped into them directly by some master computer of Lex’s that he’d never found.

“I was thinking for a present for Lex, for his birthday,” Kon said brightly.

He watched in amazement as Mercy’s mouth almost twisted into a smile as she stared at him.

It had taken him six months to get Mercy to break.

“Cassie is over in the far corner by cosmetics,” he relaxed his hands on the hanger, the cashiers tended to get tetchy if you shoved broken stuff at them. Even if you were paying for it, because he was getting the damn shirt, Lex’s birthday _was_ in a couple of weeks and just because he’d given up years ago trying to figure out what the perfect present for him was didn’t mean that he shouldn’t get him _something_.

Besides he didn’t think a perfect gift for Lex existed anyway, he was pretty sure you couldn’t give someone a planet after all.

And he already had Superman, though he was almost positive that he couldn’t convince Clark to put a bow around his neck.

Kon shied away, immediately away from those thoughts. It was one thing to know that your parents weren’t exactly playing Scrabble behind closed doors; it was another to actually _know_ what they were doing.

Maybe he could get this Lex to line his room with lead. The first time his superhearing had kicked in it had been almost the first thing Lex had done, after Lex had tested his range.

He forced himself to relax, deep breaths as he walked back, shirt in hand, back to where they’d left their cart. “Bart’s over by shoes.”

“We should leave,” Mercy said, and tone of her voice indicated that if he disagreed with her that she had no problem knocking him on his ass and throwing him over her shoulder.

“They’re not here to hurt me,” he tapped his fingers against the cart handle. “They’re just watching.”

“Still.”

“I’m not leaving without clothes, and I still need shoes,” and he had to talk to them eventually. He would just have to continue to remind himself that this wasn’t _his_ Tim and Cassie, this Tim and Cassie hadn’t done anything wrong, they hadn’t betrayed him, this Tim and Cassie had missed him and his refusal to even talk to them had hurt them.

And he had no problems with Dick or Bart. At the end Dick hadn’t even wanted to cut out his heart because of Tim. If things got too intense with Tim and Cassie he could always focus on the two of them until he didn’t want to curl up into a tiny ball and die.

He looked around the store, making sure to meet their eyes this time. Dick smiled ruefully; Bart looked amused, Cassie hopeful and Tim… well Tim didn’t look like anything but the first thing that Kon had dedicated his time to upon meeting Tim was figuring out what his non-expressions meant and there was hope there too.

They needed to get the first conversation over with, and maybe in a public place nobody would cry or make a scene.

Maybe he would even participate in the conversation without reminding them that he wasn’t their Kon and they weren’t his friends.

******************************************************************************

He’d set up his laptop in the living room and had the TV on, turned down low for background noise.

Kon had been gone for two hours and Clark wondered how long it took to pick out a couple pairs of jeans, some t-shirts. He wondered why Lex hadn’t just sent someone to pick those things up for Kon.

“You don’t need to stay,” Lex said when he walked into the living room and saw him sitting there.

Clark hadn’t even been sure he was still in the penthouse, there were only so many rooms after all and now that he was thinking it he had visions of a secret lab with hidden doors just waiting for him and Kon to lower their guard so Lex could knock them out and drag them inside.

Clark rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything.

“Really, when Kon’s not here, you don’t need to stay,” Lex said again, more forcefully.

“I wouldn’t put it past you to lock me out if I left,” Clark said mildly.

“Are we going to fight?” Lex sounded slightly more gleeful then Clark would have liked. Probably he had visions of Clark picking a fight and he thought he knew Lex well enough that he could safely say that Lex would have Kryptonite hidden somewhere around the room.

The vase over in the corner looked suspicious, and not at all like something Lex would buy. Clark wouldn’t put it past him to have some stuffed inside something that he wouldn’t mind breaking over Clark’s head.

“You said that you would tell me what else you saw,” Clark reminded him. It would be easier to have this conversation without Kon in the next room listening in without meaning to.

He was half distracted by the fact that there was an article showing up on the Daily Planet website about Kon’s return, by-line by Lois Lane and Clark spent a half a second trying to figure out who had given her whatever facts she used, before he realized that it was almost entirely comprised of supposition and there were no facts to speak of.

Except for the picture accompanying the article of him and Lex, with Kon between them being ushered into the building.

He glanced over at his coat, his cell was off and in his pocket and he imagined that there were probably a hundred and fifty _thousand_ messages from Lois in varying degrees of anger and petulance waiting for him when he finally turned it back on.

Maybe he could just drop it in the ocean somewhere and have someone from the League handle whatever interviews needed to be dealt with.

Especially since he was in the middle of Family Leave after all.

“There was really nothing else, I saw Kon in his room, talking with Tim on the phone,” Clark looked up at him in surprise because he honestly hadn’t thought that Lex would tell him anything. He’d figured that Lex would keep whatever he’d seen to himself to be used as blackmail to get Clark to leave the penthouse eventually.

“I saw Tim come to visit him once, after their split obviously because Kon wouldn’t even talk to him, would barely acknowledge him…”

“So you know that Tim and Cassie and Kon were…” Clark waved his hand around, because how did you ask your son’s other father if he knew that his son had been involved in a three-way relationship that had ended badly.

Lex narrowed his eyes at him and stared at him like he was the biggest idiot to monopolize his couch.

“Yes I know about Kon’s relationship with them,” Lex said slowly. “I also know that there was something that didn’t sit right about the entire thing with my counterpart.”

“You think they were manipulated?”

“I think that when you have Batman and Wonder Woman actively trying to break them up that three teenagers didn’t stand a chance in hell of staying together.”

Clark nodded in understanding. When his Bruce and Diana teamed up together they were a formidable pair, he didn’t think they’d be any different in an alternate universe.

Just like he didn’t believe that however much Kon, Tim and Cassie might have professed to love each other, that love wouldn’t have been enough under the weight of that alliance.

“What else?”

Lex walked over to the window, back turned toward him.

“That was all I saw.”

“But not all you know.”

Lex sighed. “You know that Kon was fifteen when he broke out of Cadmus the first time, right after your… death.”

“Yes…”

“He was twelve there,” Clark stared at his back.

“Twelve?” he asked faintly. He’d been a _child_.

Lex turned around to face him once more, nodding.

“Twelve, your counterpart demanded all sorts of tests that you never did here. You were a bit more… well you had more common sense at least, were more demanding. You found out just months after his appearance who he was cloned from, I found out shortly after that when you tried to kill me I imagine. I don’t know exactly what was said or how it was decided but there was a custody agreement drawn up that stated that we would share custody fifty/fifty.”

“He was a child,” Clark whispered. The first vision of Kon that he’d had in his apartment; how he’d looked so young… younger then Clark remembered him made much more sense.

Because Kon _had_ been younger, had been a pre-teen shuffled between parents until those parents… his brain shorted out at that point.

Because in no universe could he imagine a world where he and Lex could forge a truce that would allow them to be lovers.

“You saw a lot more then I did.” And he’d been right that Lex had gotten all the family stuff and he felt that surge of jealousy again.

Because he’d gotten one image of Kon before his world had been torn apart and Lex had gotten all the rest of the good stuff.

“I think I needed it more then you did.”

Clark snorted and Lex looked amused when he looked over at him.

“I got death and destruction and you got all the good stuff,” he knew he sounded petulant and whiny, he couldn’t help himself. He might as well be stomping his feet and pouting while he was at it, just to complete the image of ‘teen in a fit of temper’.

“I needed it more,” Lex repeated. “You already had a relationship with Kon,” _crappy as it might have been_ , was left unsaid but Clark heard it loud and clear. “I had nothing, if we were going to be what Kon needed us to be… I needed it more.”

Clark would have said something to that, but the door opened and Kon walked in looking like he’d been told all over again that his world was gone and his family and friends were all dead.

“I’m going to my room,” he said sullenly, he didn’t look at either one of them and when they heard his door click shut they both looked back over at Mercy.

Who looked like she would rather be anywhere but where she was at that moment.

“We got ambushed at the store,” she said simply and then people started bring bags in and Clark got distracted trying to figure out how Kon could have bought this much stuff in under two hours.

******************************************************************************


	4. Chapter 4

**The Other Side: Part 4**

Kon could vividly remember a scene similar to this.

Walking out of his room and finding Bruce and Diana and Clark and Lex all sitting in the living room, solemn faces.

Back then it had been because of him and Cassie and Tim and the fact that Bruce and Diana wanted their relationship ended.

Here, he couldn’t imagine what they would want.

He had no relationship with Cassie and Tim here, and even before whoever his counterpart had been had died, he didn’t think that other Kon had a relationship like that with them.

He couldn’t really tell though, during that one awkward lunch (never again, not in a million years, even if someone _paid_ him to, would he suffer through that again) both Cassie (visibly so) and Tim (not so visibly, but Kon had years reading him under his belt) had seemed slightly irritated that he’d sat on the other side of the table from them, keeping Bart and Dick as buffers through the entire thing.

All eyes turned to him when he entered the room and he almost turned and walked right back out of the room.

“Conner…” Diana started and Kon frowned. Because who the hell was Conner?

“Who the hell is Conner?” he blurted out.

“Kon, language,” Clark said sharply, Lex smirked.

“Don’t even tell me he let you get away with the whole Conner Kent pseudonym thing,” Kon muttered. “Let me guess you stuck him in glasses and flannel and no one figured it out, people are morons.”

“And you didn’t?” Bruce asked, he was staring at him intently, like he could gauge whether or not Kon was lying to him by look alone. Kon wouldn’t put it past him to be able to do exactly that.

“I _have_ a name,” Kon said firmly.

“And a last name?” Diana asked. “You would require one for school, for any legal documents.”

Kon narrowed his eyes at the group of them, Lex still looked amused and Clark uncomfortable but Diana and Bruce were staring at him like he was the most interesting thing that they’d ever seen.

What they _weren’t_ doing was looking at him like he was something disgusting that they had to scrape off the bottom of their shoes.

He rubbed his head and his shoulders slumped, he stared at the ground.

Feeling slightly shamed. Grandma Kent would have batted him upside the head for making assumptions.

He’d been reacting to them in the same manner as he would have been reacting to the Diana and Bruce in his world, like he was being threatened.

Because almost every interaction he’d had with them had been hostile in nature, with one or both of them telling him that he was a freak, an abomination and insisting that he have nothing to do with Cassie or Tim.

“Kent-Luthor, because that was before Lex and Clark got along. They flipped a coin, I think, to decide whose name got to go first…”

And Lex had still been mad, even though Kon had refereed and it had been as fair as a superhero and a superhero in training could make it.

When Clark and Lex had finally… well Lex had wanted to petition to have his name changed to just Luthor ( _‘we can use the Kent as a middle name’, ‘I’ll get beat up in school’_ ), and he’d wanted Clark to change his as well ( _‘we’ve got all those papers signed, we’re as close to married as we can get’, ‘we don’t even live together yet and already you’re trying to change me’_ ) and the weekend that Doomsday had attacked they were supposed to have been finally closing Clark’s apartment up and he was going to move fully into the penthouse with them and they were going to be a family.

He missed his fathers suddenly, violently and he wished he’d gotten just one opportunity to call them that to their faces. So he could see Lex’s face crinkle into a smile that he rarely used and see Clark beam at him as bright as the sun.

He felt Clark’s arm go over his shoulders and let himself be led to the couch.

These weren’t his parents, but they were trying just as hard as his parents had at the beginning.

He was sat down between Clark and Lex like the two would protect him if Diana and/or Bruce got violent.

“So your name was Kon Kent-Luthor then,” Diana was smiling gently at him when he looked over at her. It was not an expression that he was used to seeing on her face when she was dealing with him.

And it hit home suddenly that for all intents and purposes these people were _strangers_ to him.

He didn’t know them, didn’t know what the other Kon (Conner’s) relationship with them might have been.

“Yeah…” he rubbed at his chest, his heart hurt and he wanted desperately to go back to his room and wallow in his grief some more, “why are you here?”

“Diana and Bruce are just here to find out how you’re doing,” Lex said neutrally. “Make sure you’re in good health and everything.”

So they were here to check up on him and probably Lex and Clark and glances at both men indicated that they were quite aware of that fact, and that neither liked it very much.

Kon wanted to tell them to get used to it, for the first month after Kon had gone to live with his Lex, Batman had required them to fill out long depositions and undergo medical tests to make sure that they weren’t being brainwashed or tortured, to verify that they hadn’t been replaced by robots.

Lex had taken it fairly well; he’d only bought two or three of Bruce’s smaller companies in retaliation, and eventually everyone had relaxed.

Or relaxed as much as Batman could get.

“The Titans have expressed an interest in having Kon join them on the weekends,” Bruce said.

Kon looked over at Lex and saw him firmly biting his tongue to keep from saying ‘over my dead body’.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea at the moment,” Clark said instead and both Kon and Lex looked at him in surprise.

Of the people who’d had issues with Kon joining Young Justice and then the Titans, Clark had never been one of them.

“He should be interacting with kids in his own age instead of being cooped up in this penthouse for days on end,” Diana said firmly. Which just led Kon to believe that he was being watched by more then just the Titans.

“I’m just…” Kon stared at the table and wondered if it would look weird to pick up one of the cookies just to have something to do with his hands. “I’m not ready yet.”

******************************************************************************

Tim was waiting for him when he arrived back at the Manor, he was sitting at the table in the dining room, schoolwork spread out in front of him though Bruce could say with certainty that Tim hadn’t been working on any of it.

He looked at him expectantly, pen tapping against the paper in front of him. A list that Bruce didn’t get a chance to see before Tim closed up his books on him.

“He declined the invitation,” Bruce said simply. He shrugged out of his coat and Alfred appeared from nowhere to take it from his hands before he could set it over the back of a chair, instead settling it over his arm and scowling at him.

“He doesn’t want to come back to the Titans?”

“He says he’s not ready yet,” Bruce pulled out a chair, sat down and waited for Dick to appear.

“He says he’s not ready, or Luthor has decided that he’s not returning?” Tim was asking when Dick came around the corner.

“Clark made the statement first, Kon agreed with him and Luthor was mostly silent during the entire meeting.”

It had been… as far from normal as you could get with Clark Kent and Lex Luthor sitting side by side on a couch answering questions about their ‘son’ and talking over one another like they were friends.

Bruce had kept wanting to pinch himself, test himself to make sure he wasn’t sleeping. Wasn’t in the throes of a nightmare that he couldn’t wake from.

And then Kon had appeared, looking pale and tired and Bruce had never before thought of what Clark would have been like as a father (never mind that he thought that Lex should never be allowed to procreate period) but he and Diana had a front row seat for it.

And Kon… he’d looked at them at first like he’d expected them to attack them and then some switch had triggered and it was like he’d remembered where he was and he’d become even more pale.

The boy was quiet… too quiet. Their Kon had always been full of energy and life and Bruce had always kind of assumed that he just wasn’t all that bright, basing his assumptions on the detentions that Tim mentioned him serving after school, based on Clark’s complaints about his grades.

Maybe he just hadn’t been applying himself, because Clark, at least, had filled the role of proud parent, talking about the testing that Lex’s private tutors had been forcing Kon to undergo to find out where he was school-wise.

Excited about how far ahead he was, how smart he was.

Bruce wouldn’t be surprised to see some sticker on the bumper of Clark’s beat-up car attesting to that fact.

“So no go on the Titans then,” Dick ruffled Tim’s hair as he walked past, ignoring Tim’s glare as he pulled out a chair to slouch down in.

“Did you offer up a different team?” Tim asked.

“We mentioned that there were other options available to him,” Alfred re-appeared with a tray, Bruce eyed the glass that was set in front of him and hoped it was filled with alcohol.

Tim leaned back in his chair, not pleased, Dick looked unsurprised.

“You didn’t think he would accept the offer,” Bruce wrapped his hand around the glass, took a sip. No alcohol, he was slightly mournful for that fact.

Dick shrugged.

“He only made eye contact with Tim and Cassie maybe three times during lunch…”

“You mean that lunch where you should have been going through training exercises with the Titans and instead took Tim, Cassie and Bart to Metropolis so they could stalk Kon?”

They’d heard all about it, the first words out of Lex’s mouth when they’d arrived at the penthouse were that they might want to consider putting their sidekicks on leashes.

Dick looked unapologetic. “We were practicing stealth; obviously they need a bit more work.”

******************************************************************************

He had to check twice to verify that who was at the door was actually who was there.

Of all the people that he had thought would start showing up on their doorstep, Bart had ranked in the bottom ten not the top.

He swung the door open and was faced with Bart’s blinding smile.

“Good afternoon Mr. Kent,” courteous, well-mannered. Clark peered behind him to make sure that Tim hadn’t developed an invisibility cloak in the last three days and was using Bart as a decoy to get himself and Cassie into the penthouse.

Bart turned his head to look behind him and then turned back to him.

“Sir?”

“You’re by yourself?” Clark asked with mild confusion.

“They’re still arguing about who should actually be making first contact with Kon and I decided that we’d all be gray and in rockers before they actually came to some kind of consensus…” Bart shrugged, suddenly looking sheepish.

Clark lowered his arm and let Bart enter. Lex came out of his office, looked at Clark, at Bart and then back at Clark, shook his head and walked back in the direction of Kon’s room.

“We were going about this all wrong you know, everyone’s trying to treat Kon like he’s our Kon and no one is really sure of what exactly his relationships were with any of us. You know besides the one with Tim and Cassie, which you know about right? Because if not… well anyway I thought I’d come and introduce myself because we’re really only strangers to him and I thought maybe if we went through the introduction phase that maybe he’d at least attempt a Titans weekend…”

“Dude you should really breathe,” Kon’s voice was soft, but there was a thread of something under it that Clark hadn’t heard before.

Bart smiled at him, face wide open and happy and Kon smiled back at him tentatively. Clark took a step back but didn’t leave the room, just yet. He knew that Lex was hovering at the end of the hall, just out of sight but within hearing range just in case…

He wasn’t sure why he was thinking in just in cases; Bart had been nothing but a friend to Kon. To either version and there was no reason for him to attack. No reason for Kon to break any further then he already had.

“Hi,” Bart waved, took a deep breath and then three steps forward so that he was standing directly in front of Kon.

Clark thought, somewhat crazily, that with Bart’s last growth spurt he was now the same height as Kon because their eyes were level and they were staring at each other.

Clark took another step back and wished that one of his abilities was turning invisible. He was afraid to breathe in case it disturbed whatever Bart was attempting to do here, whatever he was doing that was _working._

Because Kon wasn’t tensing up or averting his eyes, his face hadn’t closed down and he hadn’t left the room to grieve for his world once more.

He stuck out his hand and Kon stared down at it for a second.

“Hi, I’m Bart Allen,” Bart’s face was still bright and open, but his voice was shaking. Like he wasn’t sure that whatever he had planned was going to work, but that he was willing to try anything at this point

Kon looked at him and then took his hand, shaking it slowly.

“Kon Kent-Luthor,” Kon’s voice was soft.

Hopeful.

Clark realized that he was trembling and took a slow breath, forced himself to relax.

“Wow that’s a mouthful,” Bart laughed once.

“You said that before, the first time that we met.”

And Kon grinned at him.

******************************************************************************

“You really think this is a good idea?” Lex asked him.

Bart and Kon were still in the living room, there was a movie on that they were ignoring and bowl of popcorn sitting on the couch between them but they were laughing instead.

Talking.

Kon wasn’t shuddering away or hiding himself, he was sitting on a couch laughing with Bart and he was relaxed and happy.

“Look at him.” Clark gestured at the boys, young men really. If someone had told him a week ago that _Bart_ would be the one to figure out what needed to be done he would have recommended an extended stay in a psychiatric ward.

He knew several after all. Lex was even on a first name basis with some of the doctors.

“Maybe all he needed was someone to realize that regardless of who he had been here; to him we were all strangers.”

“So if Cassie or Tim had walked up to him, introduced themselves and shook his hand instead of acting like he was their resurrected dead best friend, everything would have been okay.”

Clark shook his head.

“Not them, I think he needed someone that he didn’t have conflicting memories of. He loved them, he hated them, his feelings for them aren’t all tied up in some neat little package. He needed someone like Bart, or even Dick or Connor probably would have worked. He just needed someone to walk up to him and shake his hand and ask his name and not treat him like they’d known him his entire life. Because we haven’t,” Clark looked over at Lex who was still watching Kon and Bart, a small smile on his lips.

“It feels like we have,” Lex said softly. Face gentle and for a brief second Clark saw the young man that he’d first met.

The one that he’d dragged from a river and offered his friendship to.

In another world he’d shared his son with this man, maybe in this one he could too.

******************************************************************************

“It’s going to be fine,” Bart was saying.

It was hard in his mind to remember to call Bart the Flash instead of Kid Flash, so instead he just called him Bart and hoped that they wouldn’t have a mission before he could resolve it all in his head.

Of the three of them standing on the roof he was the only one in full costume, and he was vibrating with enough nervous energy that Tim was tempted to tell him to go run a few miles before Kon showed.

Cassie and he were in civilian clothes, Bart’s idea. The rest of the Titan’s were waiting just inside.

Tim hadn’t decided yet if this was a good idea or a bad idea, but since Bart’s plan had worked and got Kon to agree to a visit (one visit and Tim was already devising ways to make sure that a second and a third and a fourth and so on happened…), well they were going with Bart’s idea’s at this point.

“He’s probably going to be a little nervous,” Bart said.

“What’s _he_ got to be nervous about?” Cassie murmured next to him.

He glanced over. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. She looked as uncomfortable as he felt.

“You remember what I told you right?” Bart asked nervously, darting in front of them.

“Bart why don’t you go run a few laps,” Tim said quietly.

Bart took a deep breath and visibly forced himself to relax.

“No, I’m okay,” he smiled at them. “I promised him that I’d be here when he came, familiar face and all…”

Tim squinted and saw two figures approaching, Cassie tensed beside him and in front of them Bart was vibrating again.

They touched down silently, Superman’s cape blowing gently in the wind and Tim stared at the boy standing next to him.

Kon was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, plain black, no S-shield, his hair wasn’t as close-cut as his Kon’s had been.

He looked exactly the same and vastly different all at once.

He also looked nervous and a bit apprehensive and Tim and by his side Cassie stayed still.

If they scared him away now they would never get him to come back to Titan’s Tower again, Tim was 95% sure of that.

Bart moved forward, a quick hug that Kon returned hesitantly. Like he still wasn’t sure about all this but was willing to give it a try… Tim heard Cassie draw in a deep breath beside him and let it out slowly.

It served to remind him that he needed to breathe as well.

Superman stayed where he was, a silent watchful shadow and Tim had no doubt that Luthor had some satellite somewhere pointed directly at them so he could watch the entire first meeting.

Bart had a grip on Kon’s arm and was leading him toward them.

“These are my friends that I was telling you about,” Bart was saying, his eyes were telling them to calm down and not to freak out and Kon looked about two seconds away from being violently ill or diving off the roof whichever he could manage first without embarrassing himself.

“Tim Drake, Cassie Sandsmark,” Bart was all light voice and big smile. “This is Kon Kent-Luthor,” Tim started slightly at the name, even though he’d been warned.

Bruce had made mention of it, numerous times… had told him and Dick both in an incredibly droll voice that in his world Kon had never been Conner Kent.

That there’d never been an apparent _need_ for that alias because he’d been taken in by both Superman and Lex Luthor and they’d fought over how to raise the boy (who’d been twelve, Tim couldn’t imagine how weird the world would have been for a twelve year-old Superboy as opposed to the fifteen year-old that had been their Kon).

Lex Luthor and Clark Kent had raised him in the best manner they could considering that they’d probably still been arch enemies at the beginning and Tim wondered how that had worked…

Had Kon alternated weekends depending on who was fighting who and whether or not Luthor had an evil plot in place to destroy Superman?

How Kon hadn’t been forced to choose one over the other they would probably never figure out.

But all this meant that he’d never gone to Smallville, had never been given the Conner Kent alias, had never lived on the farm with Mr. and Mrs. Kent.

Because he’d never needed to.

Tim wondered if he’d still been given the El name by Superman and decided that he had to have, Kon had responded to that name at the Tower. It had been Clark saying that name to him that had gotten Kon to release his impromptu shielding in the first place after all.

Cassie started to hold out her hand but Tim beat her to the actual action and Kon looked at him for a brief second, searching his face for something before he took Tim’s hand.

Grip strong and sure and he smiled at Tim suddenly. Behind him Tim saw Superman relax, close his eyes and bow his head.

“Hi…” Tim smiled at him; he hoped it didn’t look as uncomfortable as it felt. Because it seemed like forever since he’d last smiled, since there’d been an actual _reason_ for him to do so.

“Welcome to the Titans.”

******************************************************************************


	5. Ficlet

**The Other Side: Ficlet**

The statue of Superboy and Superman was a monument to fallen heroes.

Superman powerless, Superboy dead.

Even though Superman had returned and they had a new Superboy (but not _their_ Superboy, _their_ Kon was dead just like the world that the other Kon had come from) the statue remained.

Tim sometimes thought that standing in front of the statue was the closest he would ever get to _either_ Kon.

Cassie felt the same way; it was why she made the same trek to the statue as well, though they timed their visits so that they wouldn’t run into each other there.

There was some small part of him that was gratified that she wasn’t able to slip easily back into the role of Kon’s girlfriend, just like he knew that Cassie was grateful that Tim hadn’t been able to slip back into the best friend role.

Not that Tim had thought that Kon would make it in any way easy for them, even though he was Clark’s son he was also Luthor’s and Luthor wouldn’t have made it easy for them.

Not since he considered both of them ex’s, in his world and still in his mind they’d been together and he’d been betrayed. They’d even seen the nasty breakup, Kon so distressedangryinfuriated and his Tim and Cassie hadn’t even attempted to defend or explain their actions.

Cassie had cried when they’d watched it happen, silent tears streaming down her face because they could see the pain that Kon had been in, the pain that his Tim and Cassie had been in.

And they’d still just let him walk away, Tim had to wonder if the words that should have been said would even have made a difference or if Kon’s mind had already been made up, if he’d already decided that things were over long before he’d finally confronted the others.

There were times now that they could see him visibly reminding himself that he and Cassie weren’t _his_ Tim and Cassie, they’d never betrayed him (that he knew about and if Tim had his way Kon would never know about the one kiss because he _would_ see it as another betrayal and they had enough to overcome without adding more to the pile) though most of the time Tim thought that Kon just couldn’t see the difference.

And couldn’t let go.

Just like they couldn’t, because just like Kon they were forever reminding themselves that even though he looked and sometimes acted like _their_ Kon… he _wasn’t_ their Kon, he had a whole different set of memories and friends and he could look _through_ them during briefings with considerable ease.

So they were both still hanging in the breeze, waiting for one of his impromptu visits to Titan’s Tower so he could hold them at a distance, interacting with them without interacting with them.

Tim thought if he could have five seconds alone with his counterpart he would smack him upside the head for teaching Kon how to do that.

Because it was obvious where he’d learned how to do it, as well as where the blank face had originated from and the noncommittal replies to _every single question_ they asked of him during briefings.

Not that he attended many of those. He didn’t consider himself a Titan; he didn’t consider _any_ of them with the possible exception of Bart as friends.

Tim thought that if he could figure out the pattern as to when Kon would spend his weekends at Titan’s Tower that he might be one step closer to getting his best friend back.

And he worked at that, computer programs running scenarios and most of them could only predict with 70% accuracy when Kon would appear. Tim thought that Kon’s appearances might be based on criteria that he just didn’t have.

Like level of boredom and how many fights Clark and Luthor had managed to have in a seven day time period.

Because he would skip three weekends in a row and then pop up on some odd Friday, then disappear for another four weeks.

So maybe it was as _simple_ as Kon not wanting to deal with Clark or Lex anymore.

Tim had to wonder how and why Clark was still living with them. Kon appeared as settled as he was going to get, was at least interacting with them a little instead of hiding in Luthor’s penthouse.

Clark’s voiced opinion (when asked, which most people didn’t unless they were Lois or Bruce) was that he was there to make sure that nothing happened to Kon.

Tim was of the mindset (and Bruce had concurred the one time that he’d mentioned it) that if something was going to happen it would have most likely already _have_ happened, Luthor wasn’t one to wait around when his enemies were disoriented.

The first couple of weeks that Kon and Clark had been ensconced at the penthouse they’d been disoriented. True they’d been expecting (at least Clark had) some sort of attack from Luthor’s side and had probably had precautions in place but the fact that they were _living in_ Lex’s space meant that Lex already had an upper hand.

Though Luthor was being remarkably well behaved when it came to Kon and Tim thought he might be the only one that was unsurprised by that.

That was the only thing he’d seen when he’d been alone, Luthor coming to Titan’s Tower to find out what the hell had happened and the other Tim defending himself. Telling him that everything that he and Cassie had done was to protect Kon.

He wondered, but had never found out, what Batman and Wonder Woman had threatened Kon with in order to get that Tim and Cassie to do what they’d done.

Death. Destruction.

An injury so severe that even a half Kryptonian couldn’t heal from it was obvious.

He just couldn’t figure out how Batman and Wonder Woman had planned on accomplishing it without Superman or Luthor figuring out who had done it (or had it done, Tim still didn’t think either one of them would countenance getting their hands dirty on someone that they deemed beneath them) and how they’d planned on protecting themselves when one or both of them decided to exact retribution on Kon’s behalf.

Maybe they’d thought themselves so invincible that they wouldn’t need it.

He felt the air shift behind him and he scowled, he still had at least another 30 minutes left before it was Cassie’s turn to stand here and stare at the statue and wonder what they could do differently to make Kon theirs again.

He turned when there was no voice behind him stating sharply that it was _her_ turn and could Tim please _leave now_.

Kon was standing there, glancing back and forth between the statue and Tim and Tim could feel the tension, Kon was a half second away from launching himself back into the air.

Tim remained silent, just watched him and finally Kon shifted and stepped closer.

“Bart told me but…” Kon stared at the statue, rolled his shoulders and tilted his head to the side, studying it like he would an exhibit in a museum.

“Why would anyone put up a statue for me?” he asked with bewilderment.

“Luthor did it,” Tim said, he turned to face the statue once more, Kon next to him though a distance between them.

“Lex?” A glance over showed Kon had crossed his arms over his chest and was frowning.

“You, he died, trying to save the world.”

Kon snorted and Tim didn’t need to look over to know he was rolling his eyes.

“Yeah that seems to be what I do,” he muttered and rubbed his arms like he was cold.

Tim turned to go, to leave Kon to stare at the statue and do whatever contemplation he needed. He would call Cassie after he left and tell her to delay her visit for a short while to allow him to complete it in solitude.

“Tim,” Kon said softly and Tim turned back, Kon didn’t turn around. Still had his back to him.

“I’m glad you’re not dead,” he said, his voice quiet, there was pain there and Tim took the two steps back, touched Kon’s shoulder, squeezed lightly.

“I’m glad that you’re not dead too.”

******************************************************************************


End file.
